The Home.
When Rome became so filled with people, only the wealthy were able to have houses of their own, the well-to-do and the poor had to find place in huge lodging-houses called insulae (islands), because they occupied the entire block and so were surrounded by streets. Before the great fire in the time of Nero, the streets were irregular and narrow. In the earlier times of the Republic the houses were three or four stories high and the number of stories grew until the time of Augustus, the maximum height of the frontage of a private building was made 70 feet (Roman measure), which gave room for six or seven stories which height was reduced after the fire of Nero to 60 feet, five or six stories. These houses were erected by speculators and were of poor material and poorly constructed, so that they were continually crumbling and tumbling and burning down. Being cheaply constructed and poorly repaired they did not afford great protection against the weather and so it was fortunate for the poor people that the climate of Italy for the most part favored an out-of-door life.
There were three parts in a Roman house, which were arranged in the same order in almost every house, although there might have been other rooms attached to them. In front was the atrium, partly covered; then came a center space, the tablinum, which was entirely covered; and adjoining this latter was the peristylium, an open court surrounded by columns.
The atrium was the essential feature that marked off the Roman house from that of Greece and other countries of the East. In the primitive houses, and in later times with the poor and the middle classes, this was used for both kitchen and sitting-room, while with the wealthier people it was the reception-room. This contained the family hearth and altar. The street door did not open directly from the street but there was a passage from the street and the door was placed at the end of this passage. Usually there was a square opening in the roof of the atrium for light and in the floor underneath this opening was a cistern for receiving the water that rained in and there were pipes under the floor for carrying off the water.
The tablinum was usually separated from the atrium by curtains. This contained the family records and archives; the peristylium was a later addition to the Roman house, coming when Greek architecture became to be used in the buildings. This became the ornamental part of the house, with fountains and flowers and shrubbery occupying the center of the court, surrounded by pillars and open to the sky. There were other rooms, among them being the alae, small rooms at the right and left of the atrium, and from the peristylium opened the triclinium, dining room, the culina, kitchen, and the sacrarium, chapel.
The street door was of wood, having two leaves (a folding-door), moving on pivots, and in private houses opening inward and outward in public buildings. When opening inward the door was secured by a bolt and when opening outward by lock and key. There were but few windows and in general only in rooms above the ground floor. Paper, linen cloth, horn, and mica were used in the windows and glass seems to have come into use under the early emperors. The walls were decorated with paintings. The floors of the primitive houses consisted of clay and then came bricks and tiles and stones and later the houses of the wealthy class had marble and mosaics.
"The Romans resorted to various methods of warming their rooms. They made use of portable furnaces for carrying embers and burning coals to warm the different apartments of the house, and which they seem to have placed in the middle of the room. They also had a method of heating the rooms by hot air, which was conveyed by means of pipes through the different apartments. They also had a kind of stove, in which wood appears to have been usually burned. It has been a matter of much dispute whether the Romans had chimneys to carry off the smoke, but it does not appear that these were entirely unknown to the Romans."[179]
There were four representative kinds of chairs used by the Romans. The first kind was a folding-stool with curved legs placed crosswise; the second kind had four perpendicular legs and were without backs; the third kind were similar to the second but had a back; and the fourth kind was a chair of state, with high or low back, the back and legs being ornamented.
The couches were of three kinds. There was the low dining-couch, upon which they reclined at meals; then there were the beds for sleep at night or siesta by day; and the third kind had usually two arms but no back and which were chiefly used for reading or writing at night. With the bed was the mattress, filled with straw or sheep's wool or the down of geese and swans; bolsters and cushions, stuffed as the mattress; blankets and sheets, of simple material or dyed and embroidered; pillows for propping the head or the left elbow of the sleeping or reclining persons; and footstools.
They had benches of wood and stone and bronze, some of them being semi-circular and large enough to hold quite a number of people. There were square, round, and crescent-shaped tables, some being quite large, others smaller with three legs, and a one-legged table, often quite small and made of the rarest material and elegant in design. There were pots and pans of various kinds, and buckets and dishes and drinking-vessels, and other kinds of vessels.
The houses at night were lighted with lamps. The lamp consisted of the oil-reservoir, which contained the oil, the nose, through which went the wick, and the handle to carry it by. The lamps were put on stands or were suspended from lamp-holders or they hung down from the ceiling. The stands and lamp-holders that were used by the poorer people were made of common wood or metal, while those of the rich were of costly material and often most beautifully adorned with figures of all kinds of animals carved upon them. They had lanterns also, which had for covering horn, oiled canvas, and bladder, and later, glass.